An Experiment
by bethos
Summary: Travis knows how to treat a lady right; T'pol returns his kindness in the most appropriate way she can think of.


Title: An Experiment  
  
Author: Apocalypse  
  
Fandom: ENT  
  
Pairing: Travis/T'pol  
  
Summary: Travis is a friendly and intelligent young man who knows how to treat a lady right; T'pol expresses her gratitude for his behavior in the most appropriate way she can think of.  
  
Rating: R  
  
A/N: This is set fairly early on, early to mid Season 1, in episodes I haven't watched since last winter. I thought I'd warn you.  
  
 A/N: All of my ellipses magically transformed into things that looked like this: .   
  
I love the random things Microsoft does to make my life more difficult.             
  
              
  
            He was so very young.  
  
            Although older than any of the humans aboard the Enterprise, she was still young by Vulcan standards, an up-and-coming young officer. Archer had wondered to her at the beginning of the mission what out-of-favor thing she'd done to get shunted into such an assignment, but the fact of the matter was that she was very young for a subcommander. Not seasoned. She needed more experience. Were he not such a studied and practiced student of the teachings of Surak, she might have suspected Ambassador Soval of playing a little joke. She quietly identified with him, in many ways, although she would never go so far as to say it. He was a youth, as she was. She was much older than he, and wiser, and more experienced, but she was still impulsive - for a Vulcan - and still young, in a way that she didn't think anyone else on this ship was.  
  
He was his people's true representative; everything that was positive and human in nature was Travis Mayweather. He was curious, adventurous, good-humored and considerate. He was also not a newcomer to space; he'd been raised on a traveling ship, he understood things about other spacefaring cultures that his human brethren did not. In this he was not as good a specimen to study as some of the other members of the Enterprise crew. She felt more comfortable with him, in some ways, than she did with any of the other crewmembers.  
  
            He didn't go out of his way to indoctrinate himself in the shadows and filmy surface appearances of Vulcan culture in some strange attempt to make her feel "comfortable," the way some of the other young human crew did. He understood that she was an outsider here and that she was most comfortable in that role when people did not draw attention to it by pointing it out.  
  
            He didn't suffer from the same anti-Vulcan sentiments as the Earth-born members of the crew. He made no jokes about the Vulcans' heightened senses of smell or hearing, or their quest for logic, or their frigidity as emotionless statues; he made no jokes about Vulcans at all, as far as she knew, although he did joke quite a bit. More to the point, he did not react well to racial humor told in his presence. He didn't say anything; he didn't have to. She could read his reaction in the way his face closed up a little, the stiffening of his spine. Hearing it made him uncomfortable. That endeared him to her.  
  
            He didn't go out of his way to irritate her, like Commander Tucker. Trip Tucker, the intrinsic human - as far as she could tell, he was the representative of the human stereotype, the one that made Vulcan face muscles indulge in that little twitch that was as close to a grimace as you could get without grimacing. There might be more to him than that, but he had certainly not given her opportunity to see it. Brash, impulsive, often rude - very intelligent, in an intuitive, creative way, but so annoying that it took all of her emotional control to work with him without succumbing to the urge to indulge in physical violence to make him stop talking.  
  
            He was not above her in the chain of command and so had no cause or option to castigate her, as Captain Archer was; sometimes the man seemed to take an extremely immature delight in taunting her - trifling with her, insulting her people in subtle ways, trying to get her to conform to his people and their culture. As though there weren't human vegetarians. As though there weren't humans who eschewed emotion in pursuit of reason. As though there was no right way but his way. As though his way were right at all - as far as T'pol could tell, he was self-righteous but not for any particular logical reason.  
  
            He approached his work with an attitude that T'pol found both human and efficient; he was enthusiastic and cheerful, but in a business-like way that was somewhat confusing, as she'd always been taught that emotion did not belong in the workplace. He was young and made mistakes, but seldom made the same mistakes twice. He could be physically reckless in the pursuit of his duty, but then, so could she.  
  
            She found him fascinating because he was a contradiction; because he was wise beyond his years in some ways and so young and untested in others. He would sneak a seat in the captain's chair when he thought no one was looking, but that didn't mean he wasn't one of the best human pilots she had ever worked with.  
  
            Perhaps those were her reasons for agreeing to his proposal.  
  
            Why had she agreed?  
  
            It wasn't that he hadn't meant it. He'd offered the suggestion playfully, in passing, while they were in one of the Enterprise's turbolifts together. He did not expect that she would in a thousand years take him up on it.  
  
            "Ensign Mayweather," she said by way of acknowledgement as she stepped into the turbolift.  
  
            "Subcommander T'pol," he replied in kind.  
  
            The silence extended, not entirely uncomfortably, but then Travis grew bored and antsy and decided to take matters into his own hands and start a conversational gambit.  
  
            "So, Subcommander . . . would you care to join me in my quarters for dinner tonight? Say, 1900 hours?  We can treat it as an experiment in xenoanthropology," he said to her. "It could be fun." He wasn't even sure "xenoanthropology" was a word; he'd just tacked on an extra Greek prefix in hopes that his meaning would get across. It seemed that it had.  
  
            "Yes, Ensign. That might be enlightening." She inclined her head to him, all courtesy.  
  
            Travis floundered for a moment, surprise blunting the edge of his usual easy charm. "I'll, er, see you tonight, then," he said.  
  
            "I . . . look forward to it," T'pol said, in a passable imitation of human vernacular. The lift came to a halt and she left, heading towards Sickbay for a meeting with Dr. Phlox, and he continued in it up towards the Bridge, wondering what in the world you served a Vulcan and, more importantly, how he was going to serve it to her.  
  
            He certainly hadn't expected her to agree to the proposal. But maybe Hoshi would lend him her hot plate for the occasion, and Chef owed him a favor or two and could probably be plied for vegetables and sesame oil .  
  
            His courtesy was not flawless by Vulcan standards, but he was doing very well for a human, and the gestures were all well-meaning and friendly enough that T'pol was more than inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt when he botched something. He had only a passing familiarity with her culture, but he at least seemed painstakingly aware of which of his own customs were alien to her. The conversation was relatively innocuous, not reaching deeply for either of them, and much more comfortable for her than the usual meal she took with Captain Archer and Commander Tucker in Archer's personal mess.  
  
            The hostility was not there. He seemed fascinated by the differences rather than repelled by them.  
  
            "Have you ever used chopsticks before?" Travis asked, watching as she neatly picked up a small piece of carrot and carried it to her mouth.  
  
           "I have experimented with them. There are eating implements on Vulcan that are not unlike them in form and function, although these are particularly elegant," T'pol said mildly.  
  
            "Thank you. My mother told me that if I was ever in San Francisco I had to try the Chinese food . . . so I picked these and some recipes up while I was in the area," Travis said. "If you're not going to do something the right way, you might as well not do it at all."  
  
            "The flavors are . . . mild. It is quite pleasant," T'pol said.  
  
            Travis nodded. "I understand Vulcans have much more sensitive taste and smell than humans do, so I thought mild would be best if you were willing to experiment."  
  
            T'pol nodded. "Thank you."  
  
            "And I knew you were philosophically bound to vegetarianism," Travis added. "So I thought this would be a good choice."  
  
            "I appreciate your effort, Ensign Mayweather," T'pol said.  
  
            "Please. Call me Travis," he replied.  
  
            T'pol hesitated, and then inclined her head. "Very well. As long as we are not on duty." It seemed a little illicit somehow, taking his given name for her own use, although she wasn't sure why. There was also a necessary return favor. "You may call me T'pol."  
  
            Travis grinned. It was a pleasing expression. If it weren't so fraught with emotional connotations, she might have been quite comfortable with it; as it was, she found a small part of her wishing that she felt as though smiling were a proprietarily acceptable course of action.   
  
            "Thanks, T'pol," he said.   
  
            "You are welcome . Travis," she said, trying it out.  
  
            "Is T'pol your given name?" he asked.  
  
            T'pol hesitated. "Vulcan naming conventions are considerably different from humans," she said. "I am not certain I can explain them. Suffice it to say that T'pol is as close to I come as having a 'given name'."  
  
            "Are there other Vulcans named T'pol?" Travis asked.  
  
            "Yes," she said. There weren't enough two-syllable words in the Vulcan language for there to only be one Vulcan named T'pol; she would have thought that was simple logic, but then again, she was willing to cut him a little slack, as logic was not traditionally a human strong suit. He was trying so hard to make her feel welcome; it would not be courteous to return his friendly overtures with unfriendliness of her own.  
  
            "How do you differentiate when you're both in the same room?" he asked.  
  
            She canted her head to one side, regarding him. "Fortunately, the situation has not as yet come up. But I believe we would use our parents' names in order to avoid confusion."  
  
            "I'm always really confused when there's another Travis in the room," he said. "Luckily, it doesn't come up on Enterprise."  
  
            "That is fortunate," T'pol said.  
  
            He looked up at her, setting down his chopsticks carefully on the table. "T'pol," he said, suddenly serious.  
  
            She returned his glance, expectant.  
  
            "I just wanted to apologize," Travis said earnestly.  
  
            "You have committed no offense, Travis," T'pol replied, puzzled.  
  
            "I mean, for the behavior of my crewmates. They haven't made it easy on you . they don't understand about Vulcans, that you're different but you're still . I mean ." Travis paused, losing the thread of his speech.  
  
            T'pol raised an eyebrow, waiting.  
  
            "Just because you don't show your feelings as a matter of culture doesn't mean you don't have any to hurt," Travis said.  
  
            T'pol inclined her head to acknowledge that and went on to correct him as gently as she could. "We do not discuss . . . emotions. The passions of the mind detract from the pursuit of logic and discipline. We keep them . under control. Very few manage the discipline to eradicate them completely." Kolinahr . she doubted that her own discipline would ever be enough for such complete perfection of control.   
  
            "That doesn't make their behavior acceptable," Travis pointed out, the slightest touch of anger quivering in his voice - anger at injustice, on her behalf, that she found strangely touching even as it showed how very human he was. "Just because you can control your reaction to it."  
  
"Your crewmates have displayed some animosity towards me, that is certain, but I have chosen to take it as . a test . of my discipline. Should simple human prejudices be enough to break my control, I would not be much of a Vulcan." The wry humor felt a little strange, a little too close to true - how often had being surrounded by strangers who did not like her come close to cutting through her walls? How often had she felt the surge of irritation at Commander Tucker's obnoxious taunts, at Captain Archer's subtler ribbing? How close had she come to turning back, fleeing these passionate creatures and their strangeness and their mistrust . . . ?  
  
"Not all humans are prejudiced against Vulcans," Travis said. He reached out, impulsively, as though to take her hand, and then stopped himself. "Oh . Vulcans don't like to be touched."  
  
T'pol looked at him steadily, made a decision, and reached out to take his hand firmly in her own. "We refrain from casual touching," she corrected. "Not from all touching."  
  
He smiled at her, uncertain but delighted at this apparent sign of favor. "How come?" he asked.  
  
She leaned back. He was full of questions and did not, apparently, understand the significance of her action. This was not surprising; humans could be very indirect about some things. "We have a very sensitive sense of touch; we do not indulge in it without reason. Economy of touch, however, does not prohibit closeness; just a lessening of random encounters. We respect each other's personal space."  
  
"Closeness," Travis repeated softly. "Touch is . . . intimate?"  
  
T'pol hesitated. "Yes," she said.  
  
Travis glanced at their hands, clasped across the table. "T'pol," he said. "I'm . . . not sure of the . . . protocol ."  
  
She permitted herself a flash of humor - nothing beyond a glint in her eyes - at his discomfiture. "What protocol there is," she said, "suggests that you either take the advance or reject it."  
  
            "I didn't ask you to -" Travis began.  
  
            T'pol shook her head. "I am aware of what your motives were, Travis," she said in a low voice. "But I believe that the . . . xenoanthropological experiment," she used the phrase delicately, dropping the words with a Vulcan's deadpan into her sentence, " . . .might prove fascinating should we choose to continue it in this way."  
  
            "The experiment?" Travis seemed mildly crestfallen. She thought about this for a moment, and determined that it was damaging to his human pride to think that he was nothing more than a cultural experiment for her. And it would have been less than the truth to let him believe that, and Surak had been less than fond of those were dishonest.  
  
            T'pol sighed. "You have been kind to me," she said quietly. "You have shown me a side of your people that I could not otherwise have seen. With passion comes compassion; with vengeance, mercy; with anger, a vehemence in defense of principle that cannot otherwise be duplicated. I wish to show you a side of my people that few outsiders see, in return for your kindness."  
  
            He reached out, tentatively, and took her other hand in his. "In that case, I don't see how I could refuse," he said, grinning a little at her - all amiability, all adventure again. His pride was no longer in danger.  
  
            "I only ask one thing, Travis," T'pol said mildly.  
  
            "What?" he asked.  
  
            "That this be . . . confidential," she said. "It would not be fortuitous to either of our positions should word of this encounter escape."  
  
Travis reached up, with fingers shy and bold at the same time, to trace the delicate point of her ear with a light touch that made her breath catch. "Absolutely. I won't tell a soul," he said.  
  
It was like nothing she had ever experienced before, but that was not unexpected. He was at the same time hesitant and extremely forward, in ways she was certain he could not know were forward; the casual intimacy with which he played with her ears, for example. Their sensitivity was not something that Vulcans liked to bruit about casually, but Travis learned quickly that he could make her react to him in a manner surprisingly approximating passion if his warm mouth spent any amount of time near her ears. She, in turn, was surprised by the almost reverent attitude that he gave her breasts, once they had abandoned their uniforms as unnecessary baggage; it seemed that the rumors about human fascination with female bosoms were not exaggerated, as he stroked and sucked and nibbled there with more attention than just about anywhere else on her body.   
  
T'pol found that although Travis's ears were not as sensitive as a Vulcan's man would have been, nibbling on the lobes and sliding her tongue into his ear, tasting the slightly bitterer flesh there, seemed to work relatively well. As she perched on his lap his hands caressed everywhere they could reach, while she had a certain method to her lovemaking that she refused to abandon, so that few parts of his extremely aesthetic body - the ripple of muscle beneath dark skin, shining with sweat from their mutual heat - escaped her ministrations. She tasted him all over; he was sharp, salty, tangy, coppery; his smell was strong in her nostrils, almost overwhelming, and she found that the strange mixture of the natural human scent with his cologne was not entirely unpleasant, if strong and startling, and she could definitely get used to it, coupled with the sharp tang of his tongue in her mouth.   
  
She had known that humans were sexually compatible, if not biologically; and although she was not the most experienced of lovers, she had a working knowledge of what went where. And the strangeness of it gave it an intensity, a drama that she did not think she could have imagined it would have. It was extremely new to both of them; they were sensitive in different ways, in different places. He made less noise than she was expecting, as Vulcan men were not usually quiet; she made more noise than she was expecting - startled gasping, tiny vocalizations of surprise (most pleasant, some not).   
  
            The denouement was the most surprising at all. They had both been so careful - sampling here and there, testing each other, tasting each other. But she had been conditioned for Vulcan sex, which was generally quite violent; Travis did not thrust into her in a loss of emotional control - sexual intercourse being a challenge that pretty much everybody failed, even without the undignified stripping of mental control that came with the plak tow - but slipped into her more gently, probing slowly, dipping into her with just as much sensual caring as he had shown throughout all of their lovemaking.   
  
            It was soft, tender, gentle, controlled . . . it was as if being at home with his emotions all the rest of the time gave him a control now, in the heat of the overwhelming rush of physical joining, that a Vulcan lost, slipping into a brief, maddening frenzy that was often as painful as it was unavoidable.  
  
            Afterwards, T'pol slid away from him with some reluctance. It would not be good for her to spend too much longer in his company; it wouldn't be seemly for people to start talking. "Thank you very much," she murmured to him.  
  
            Travis grinned, pillowing his arms behind his head; smug, but it was the human way and she thought he might deserve it, at least a little bit. "Thank you, T'pol," he said.  
  
            "It was . . . a very rewarding experiment, Travis," T'pol said, climbing neatly back into her uniform.  
  
            "Maybe we can repeat it sometime," he suggested, looking at her hopefully.  
  
            T'pol hesitated. It was not as though the experience was unpleasant; it was just that she was concerned about the effect repeated exposure to it might have on her emotional walls, not to mention the look of the thing and all the reasons not to expand their brief encounter into a relationship. "Perhaps," she said warily. "We will see."  
  
            Travis nodded.  
  
            T'pol left his quarters at a brisk stride, heading purposefully towards her own with not a hint to the rest of the crew that anything unusual had happened at all.  
  
            She could use a shower, and probably a very long meditation tonight before she succumbed to sleep.   
  
            Ensign Mayweather had given her rather a lot to think about. 


End file.
